Overview

Dunning is an automated payment management process that allows you to set up retries for failed payment methods on a specific schedule and send reminders about outstanding dues after a declined payment.

Key benefits

• Maximize collections: Customize retry intervals and counts to capture more successful payments.
• Proactive communication: Automatically notify customers of failures and guide them to update billing.
• Flexible outcomes: Choose to pause or cancel subscriptions when retries exhaust to match your business policy.

Key details

What is dunning?

Dunning is the retry-and-remind workflow for failed subscription payments. When a payment method declines, Recurly Commerce can retry the charge on your chosen schedule and send alerts to subscribers about the outstanding balance.

Dunning configuration

In the Settings > Dunning section of the Recurly Commerce app, choose one of three built-in dunning strategies:

Recurly Commerce's standard dunning setting: Subscription contracts automatically cancel if all retries fail. By default, the system retries every 2 days up to 5 times.

Retry after failed billing: Specify how many days—and how many retry attempts—to schedule after the renewal date, and decide whether to pause or cancel once retries complete.

Retry before failed billing: Define retry attempts before the renewal date, plus pause-or-cancel behavior post-retries.

Payment failure notification

Enable the Failed payment method email in Notifications to alert customers immediately when a charge fails. The message includes a link to their portal to update payment details.

Reset billing information

Merchants can’t edit payment details directly, but you can prompt a reset email:

1. Go to Customers, select a subscriber, and scroll to Billing & Shipping.
2. Click Send email to reset to trigger a Shopify-hosted billing update flow.

Process failed payment

After a subscriber updates their payment method, click Process Now on their contract to immediately re-charge and, on success, resume the next renewal without altering the schedule.